The Lieutenant's Nurse

by Sara Ackerman

  When things at the hospital went south, Billy jumped in to get her stationed at Pearl. He made her feel important at a time in her life when no one else did.

  Now the only problem was Lieutenant Clark Spencer.

  When Clark returned, he was carrying two drinks that looked suspiciously like Moscow mules. The orange Hawaiian-print shirt he wore brought out the bronze in his skin and she wondered if he might have a few drops of Spanish or Italian blood in him.

  He handed her a copper mug and smiled. That dimple was too much. “Seems like we could both use a little pick-me-up. I’m not usually a day drinker, but figured why not,” he said.

  “You know this is not going to help my lessons,” she said.

  “Actually, you’d be surprised. Fewer inhibitions and the language flows more naturally.”

  She took a sip, mouth puckered. “Are you saying I’m not a natural?”

  “Kimi wa nante utsukushıˉin daroo.”

  “There you go again, mumbling secrets to me. I can tell by the look in your eye it’s not part of the lesson.”

  He looked amused, but didn’t respond.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  The way he said it, like he was giving her an out, only made her want to know more.

  “I do.”

  “I said ‘You’re beautiful.’”

  The words nearly launched her off the chair. Clark was an impossibility. Yet here she was, thinking about him forty-two minutes of every hour. In fact, she couldn’t not think about him. It would be easier if he would just stay in his room for the rest of the trip and she could continue on with life as planned—running away to Hawaii.

  GHOST SIGNALS

  Damn. He’d gone and gotten all serious on her, and then tried to lighten things up with a drink, which turned into two, and before he knew it, he was imagining taking her to that remote beach near Haleiwa and kissing her underwater. Feeling the smooth porcelain of her skin. He had to rub his eyes to wipe the image from his mind. He had spent half the previous night ruminating on whether to act on his feelings and decided there was no harm in spending a little time with her. How much could happen in a few days anyway? But Eva had a wall up of some kind, and whenever the conversation veered toward anything to do with the future, she became silent.

  Clark was trying to figure out a way to dine alone with her, maybe on the upper deck of the ship under the stars, but what was the point, really? Instead, he sat with the football boys and before he could make his way over to Eva for a hello, Hank Wilson showed up in the doorway and made a beeline for him.

  “Lieutenant, can I borrow you again?” was all he needed to say.

  On the way out of the dining room, Clark managed to catch Eva’s eye and he gave her a nod. Now she was really going to wonder, and he felt like a fool for bringing up the war with her. He had been hoping last night was just a fluke, some atmospheric anomaly that would not be repeated. But the look on Wilson’s face said otherwise.

  Back in the radio room, there was a yellow notepad covered in scribbles. The sound of buzzing and crackling permeated the space around them.

  “We got good radio direction finder bearings, mostly from a northwesterly direction from where we are,” Wilson said.

  “Again?” Clark said.

  He nodded. “Pretty bold if you ask me. Letter for letter the same message coming from Tokyo, which only solidifies that the signals are repeat-backs.”

  “How do you know?” Clark asked.

  “Because I copied the original land-based signals. We don’t have a recorder, but it’s pretty obvious.”

  He wondered if the boys stuck out in the boonies at Station H were picking this up, too. In which case, the admirals would be mobilizing forces anytime now. His palms began to sweat. “What frequency did you say they’re using?”

  “Low frequency—375 kilocycles,” Wilson said.

  “Isn’t that reserved for direction finding?” Clark asked.

  “Yes, and it has a pretty limited range. But it’s brilliant. No one’s going to be monitoring for Japanese signals in this band.”

  Which meant it was probably lost on the boys at Station H. The immensity of what they had stumbled upon began to creep up on him. He started pacing and his armpits were now drenched, even though the room was an ice cave. “Have the signals moved since yesterday?”

  “It appears they have. I’ll know more if it’s still going on tomorrow night,” Wilson said.

  “Damn, we need to get this info straight to navy HQ when we arrive.”

  “If it’s not too late by then.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this today?” Clark asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Don’t. We don’t want to start a panic.”

  “What about the captain?”

  “I would say yes if our ship was in any kind of danger, but this might be a need-to-know situation.”

  There would be no way to get word to Honolulu without broadcasting on frequencies that anyone could listen in on. And what would he say? Armada of Japanese ships amassing northwest of Oahu, probably getting ready for an attack. That would not go over well. Especially if they were wrong.

  “Can you be sure about all this?” he asked Wilson.

  “Absolutely. I can’t tell you what the Japs have up their sleeves, but you can be sure they are out there. There is no other explanation.”

  Unbelievable, and yet not impossible.

  Clark turned on his official voice. “The report needs to be impeccable. So make sure to include every last detail that you can think of. Including your history and experience and how you arrived at all this.”

  “Roger that.”

  They continued for another hour listening to the signals, using the huff-duff direction finder, and taking down notes. If only he could decode the signals, he would be in a unique position to translate them. Whatever the Japanese army was planning, it could not be good. FDR had backed them into a corner and now they were going to make him pay. Everyone had been so sure about them sticking closer to home. Singapore, Dutch East Indies, Guam. Now it looked like everyone had been mistaken.

  * * *

  Early morning at sea was one of his favorite times. The ocean still slept, without any interruption from the wind, and the waters were smooth as blue glass with ribbons of current. He ran his finger along the railing and licked the salt that came away. The swells had picked up again, big rolling mountains, rocking the ship from side to side. No doubt people would be sick again, but he loved the energy the sea put off. A pair of noddy terns flitted about fifty yards out, the first he’d seen so far. That meant land was within reach. Tomorrow.

  He thought about Beth and wondered what she would think of Eva. Though the two were from different worlds, oceans apart, they both carried an indefinable spark. The minute you walked into a room, you could feel their pull. At least he could. Or maybe that was just the way of attraction. An invisible band of fire burning between two people.

  A splash in the distance caught him off guard. Five seconds later, a humpback whale shot out of the water, making a huge whack when it landed. He looked around to see if anyone else had seen, but the deck was empty. Either too early, or the motion sickness had taken over. The whale breached again, and then lay on its back and slapped a huge white flipper on the surface, over and over again.

  Beth had loved whales. One of her biggest gripes with Japan had been their insistence on butchering whales and dolphins in large numbers. She was outspoken about it, too, giving the people a piece of her mind. He admired that in her, and got the feeling that Eva was like that, too. Not afraid to speak up for what she believed in.

  Eva. The voice of reason said let her go. War was brewing and it was looking more and more like there could be an attack any day now. The boys in the Dungeon needed
him, and he was hell-bent on his code work. But another part of him wanted to protect her from whatever might be coming, and to see what unfolded. Truth be told, he was thinking about her a whole lot more than he ought to. Those green eyes were something else, too. Maybe he’d flip a coin. Heads—ask her to have dinner on the deck with him; tails—avoid her until Honolulu and go on his way.

  He took out a quarter.

  THE EXCHANGE

  December 2

  “What! You don’t know where Carrier Division 1 and Carrier Division 2 are?” says Admiral Kimmel, after being briefed on a five-page report he’d just been handed.

  “No, sir, I do not. I think they are in home waters, but I do not know where they are,” says Layton.

  Kimmel looks at him sternly, yet with a hint of a smile. “Do you mean to say they could be rounding Diamond Head and you wouldn’t know it?”

  “I hope they’d be sighted before now,” says Layton.

  —An exchange between Admiral Husband Kimmel and Edwin Layton, combat intelligence officer in charge of the Pacific arena, after Kimmel reads Layton’s report summarizing where the Combined Japanese Fleet, aka Orange Fleet, was thought to be. Neither one of those commands had appeared in radio traffic for fully fifteen and possibly twenty-five days.

  HEADS OR TAILS

  Their last full day aboard the Lurline and not five minutes after Jo got up, she was back in bed groaning and slightly green. After bringing her a glass of water and a packet of soda crackers, Eva left to go above deck. Seasickness was terribly unpleasant to be around, and there was nothing else Eva could do to help her. Instead of seeking out Clark in their unofficial meeting place on the railing, she went straight to the opposite deck. The smooth but hilly water, the sticky air, this was the tropical feel she had imagined. The only thing was, the closer they got to Hawaii, the more she had the jitters about being found out. Here on the ship it was easy to be vague about who you were and what you did, but with the doctors and nurses at Tripler, you never knew who might have seen the headlines and paid attention, or who might have ties to Dr. Brown. The medical world had that old boy network feel. But here she was.

  A strange slapping noise came from her left and she saw an enormous gray creature leaping straight into the air. She stood and stared with her mouth open.

  A whale!

  Forgetting her idea to avoid Clark, she sprinted down the deck, around back to the other side, ignoring the slanted angle of the ship. Her hat blew off and she had to run back and grab it. A pair of old men on deck chairs sipping coffee gave her funny looks. She thought it was probably too early for Clark to be up, but there he was.

  Her breath had left her and she gasped. “Whales!”

  “I guess you would have never seen them before, huh?” he said with a smile.

  “You must come see!”

  She was tugging at his arm.

  He laughed and pointed. “They’re over here, too.”

  A whale rose up, lifting its entire body airborne before falling flat on the water. The sound split the morning air around them.

  “Why, they’re so...so...massive. And majestic,” Eva said.

  What a spectacle! It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. The whale was the size of a school bus.

  “Pretty amazing, aren’t they? They call that breaching,” he said, leaning against the railing with his shirtsleeves rolled up.

  Eva moved in next to him and they stood there hollering every time the whale launched out. She felt like a young girl at the circus hanging out with her best friend. The next thing she knew, her hand had latched onto his arm, squeezing. His biceps was as hard as a chunk of wood.

  “This is the highlight of my whole trip,” she said.

  Standing there in the sun-kissed morning, watching whales breach. A day away from a tropical paradise. Two months ago, she would have never imagined herself on a ship in the middle of the Pacific. Life sure had a way of throwing in twists and turns when you least expected it. But as always, deep inside, the guilt of leaving Ruby was rooted firm.

  “Mine, too,” Clark said, close enough that he was almost speaking into her hair.

  The hum of his voice settled below her navel, and sent a wave of longing running down to her toes. Afraid to glance his way, Eva kept her eyes glued to the water. This was not going as planned. A few seconds later, he ran a finger along her cheek, just below the stitches.

  “You’re healing fast,” he said.

  She could scarcely breathe.

  “It’s the salt air. It has to be,” she said.

  Why was her heart skipping beats?

  “You’re so thin, Eva. What happened?”

  If she were to open up now, it would be her undoing. Keep him at arm’s length and get to shore. “Just Ruby. I love her so much. It’s been rough, you know?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “I do.”

  Eva still refused to make eye contact, instead focusing on the quarter in his hand. “What are you doing with that?”

  He looked down, glanced back at her and held it out. “Will you flip it for me?”

  “What’s this about?” she wanted to know.

  “Just a habit I have.”

  She crossed her arms. “I should know what I’m flipping for.”

  “How about this? Heads, you have dinner with me on the top deck under the stars. Tails, we go on business as usual and join the masses in the dining hall,” he said with his eyes fixed on hers.

  A bold move, to hang everything on the flip of a coin. Maybe he felt as confused as she did. Not mentioning Billy from the beginning had been a big mistake. Now it seemed impossible. The words would simply not come out. It was a rotten thing to do to someone, she knew that, which made it all the worse.

  Torn between yearning for heads and requiring tails in order to keep her sanity, she tossed the quarter into the air. Before she could blink, Clark caught it and placed it on the back of her hand.

  His warm palm glued to her skin.

  The wild thumping of her heart.

  Tails.

  * * *

  After an early breakfast with Clark, in which there were long silences and periods of awkwardness, Eva moped around the room for a bit. She’d given Jo more ginger brew, leafed through an army manual and picked up a pamphlet on Hawaiian sayings, but nothing held her attention for long. Utsukushıˉ...something or other...kept ringing in her ears. She had committed it to memory as best as she could, but that last word was too complicated.

  Deciding it might be best to move her legs and get her blood flowing, Eva strolled through all the grand rooms of the ship again, arriving in the writing room. Ruby was deserving of a longer letter, so she grabbed several pieces of Matson linen stationery and sat down to write.

  Dear Ruby,

  Konnichiwa. We are almost to Hawaii, and I am doubting my decision to come, mainly because I miss you. How are you? I hope you are following orders and doing the exercises I showed you. Remember, the more you move your body the better. Get that blood flowing! Speaking of blood flowing, this ship is so huge that one walk around it and you’ve done enough walking for a week. That combined with the salty air is a tonic all its own. Everyone should be required to take a trip like this at least once in a lifetime, or especially when ill or depressed.

  Did I mention the people? They are a whole new breed. Adventurous, worldly, fashionable. One in particular, a naval officer I’ve become rather fond of. He’s been giving me Japanese lessons in exchange for smashing me in the face with a tennis ball. Yes, it’s true, I was playing tennis! My cheek split open and required stitches. (Don’t worry, I am fine.) The language is so foreign, it hurts my brain, but it’s fun, too. And now I will be able to communicate with the local Japanese people in Honolulu. My only wish is that Clark and I can remain friends after the journey, as he is a fine specimen and a good man. Why is it
that women and men can’t seem to be friends without arousing suspicion? This is an inconvenient rule of life, and I don’t like it one bit.

  Anyway, we saw whales this morning. And then dolphins flying, spinning and twirling in the air. It looked like a real show for our benefit the way they rode in our massive wake. This ocean is really something you need to see for yourself. A blue you cannot even imagine, with giant sun rays shining through the depths.

  I must admit, I am also looking forward to seeing this island that I’ve heard so much about. Is it really true that I will be walking around Waikiki barefoot and in nothing but a bathing suit, swimming in blue lagoons every day? Still, I will be counting the days until I see you again.

  Take good care.

  Your friend,

  Eva Cassidy

  PS Say hello to Evelyn for me.

  PSS Konnichiwa means hello in Japanese.

  She read over the letter, wondered if she should have even mentioned Clark, but then sealed it. Ruby would immediately home in on his significance, but what was she to do? She had to tell someone about him, lest she explode. Her heart was definitely jumbled, and for the first time, she dared to imagine how Billy would react if she told him she had met someone else. It would likely be inconceivable to him.

  But Billy was her future. A guarantee. Clark was a big unknown. And, anyway, she loved Billy, didn’t she? She had also made a promise to her father while holding his crumpled hand. Not only that, but Billy knew her secret.

  Flipping tails had been for the best. So why did she feel so gut-twistingly awful?

  * * *

  As dinnertime neared, Eva considered staying in the room with Jo. Why go upstairs? There was no one else she was particularly eager to talk to, except maybe Dr. Wallace. The twins were fun to be around, but they would probably interrogate her about Clark and want to know how the two had ended up arriving at breakfast together.